


why won't you ever know (that i'm in love with you)

by mayafriar



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: (because canon screwed these two over), Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Maya Hart-centric, Pining, this is really emo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 09:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8706406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayafriar/pseuds/mayafriar
Summary: She tells him shes always known his name because of course she has. She has known him from the start, she has always known who he was. And she watches him put Riley on a horse like a fairytale, and she ignores the pain in her chest while she watches her best friend gazing at him, at Lucas. She knows she might be the worst friend in the world and she balls up her fists till her fingernails cut her palms.// or maya wishes lucas knew just how much he meant to her





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from the cure song "just like heaven"

It starts in the seventh grade. She is with Riley on the subway, and they meet Lucas. He is kind and moral and upstanding and she can’t stand him. Typically, Riley falls helplessly in love, and Maya rolls her eyes and laughs at him. He starts at their school and she realises things are going to change, her world is expanding beyond just the three of them, and she watches as her best friend is swept up in a fairy tale. 

She watches Farkle too, how he changes towards Riley. Things are so different now, and she wonders how they will get through middle school. She wonders how this boy, this Huckleberry, could shake her world so quickly, could turn everything she expected this year to be on its head. She resents him, if only a little, for stealing her best friends away, capturing them with his stupid Southern charm and his stupid cowboy mannerisms. 

Then she watches him. And he’s more complicated then she first thought. He is angry, angrier then she is, and she watches him clench his fists when people laugh at Farkle and how his glare turns icy when someone jokes about Riley. She starts to change her mind, think that someone who cares so much about her people must be alright. She begrudgingly respects him, though she’d never let him know it, and she respects his place in the group.

He plays her game, her silly teasing back and forth, and she thinks that maybe this kid is all right, she might just get along with him. He laughs when she hahurrs and brings her a rose at the dance and finally, finally, she has an equal in this little ditty she likes to do. She doesn’t mind him being around and she thinks their little group of four is alright, maybe its okay that it’s not just the three of them anymore. She still insists she’ll castrate him if he hurts Riley. 

They aren’t friends, she thinks, no, they have a kinship. A strange quasi-friendship in which they pretend they hate each other. Riley doesn’t get it, and she asks and asks why Maya doesn’t like Lucas, only for her to laugh in her face. Of course she likes Lucas, she just pretends she doesn’t. She thinks he’s great, actually. Maybe he’s a little more like her then she first thought, his life a little bit closer to hers then either Riley or Farkle’s. But Riley insists, she questions, she ponders. Maya still only laughs. 

They are paired together for this ridiculous project so she goes to his house, and they try to bake muffins but they keep laughing and laughing and laughing, and she gets flour all over her face and he has batter in his hair. His mom finds them and helps them fix everything up and she is the nicest woman she has ever met, and Maya can so easily see how they are related and she feels kinda weird being with Lucas and his mom like this but she likes it. 

She tells him shes always known his name because of course she has. She has known him from the start, she has always known who he was. And she watches him put Riley on a horse like a fairytale, and she ignores the pain in her chest while she watches her best friend gazing at him, at Lucas. She knows she might be the worst friend in the world and she balls up her fists till her fingernails cut her palms. 

He calls her his friend, and she pretends everything is normal. She hides away her pain, masks it with quips and jokes and hahurrs and everyone always thinks she’s oh so funny, don’t they? Except Lucas. He watches her with a set jaw and she hopes to God that he isn’t on to her because she is so selfish, she doesn’t want Riley to know how terrible she is, she doesn’t want to save Riley from herself. 

He stares at her too much. She can’t handle it, not when he looks into her eyes and it feels like he can see into the very depths of her soul. He says things too, things that make her sick to her stomach because he should be saying them to Riley, he should be staring at Riley. It’s a precarious game she is playing, but she tries to make it okay, she tries to keep up the facade. She doesn’t like the huckleberry, no no, not at all. 

They go to Texas, all of them, and they should never have signed him up to ride the stupid bull. She watches someone else fall off, and she knows that she could never bear to see him fall, that she can’t handle the thought of him hurt. She threatens him, but he goes anyway, and it hurts her, it hurts her that she means so little to him when he means everything to her. She sits faraway while the crowds cheer him on.

Riley finds out, and she says it’s okay. She tells Maya that Lucas is like her brother, and she pushes them in front of a campfire, leaving the truth hanging in the air between them. He stares at her again, and she denies everything, like she always does. He doesn’t believe her, and then suddenly her face is in his hands and all she can see is green as she looks up at him, searching for answers to what this all means.

There aren’t any. They go on a date, and it doesn’t feel like they are them, not at all. They pretend to be people they are not, and she knows she should feel happy, but she also knows that he thinks of Riley while they are together. She smiles, and she pretends to have it together, that she doesn’t know that none of this is right, that she has taken something that isn’t hers.

Time passes, and then they are under the stars and the fireworks and he smiles at her, and he tells her such sweet things that her heart swells. She is flying, and she is hoping that things might be okay now, when she hears what she should have known, and she looks at him and knows that he will go to Riley. She sits on the bench with them at midnight, and she feels her heart breaking bit by bit. 

It continues for so long, this tedious triangle between them, and she feels deep within her that she is subjecting herself to more pain, but she can’t bring herself to go. Not when they sit in the bay window, and he says he likes Riley and her, and she knows she wasn’t crazy to think that he could like her, that maybe she was worth something. But she feels the cracks between Riley and herself, and she knows that this cant go on forever. 

They start high school, and everything is new. She is Lucas’s girlfriend. She likes the word, and she likes being his. But then he leaves her and Riley, and they sit in the hole for what feels like eternity, and she wonders how things came to be like this. He comes back to them eventually, but the sick feeling in her stomach doesn’t go away. 

It goes on, and Riley tells her she’s changed, and she forces her to change back. She reverts back to the old Maya, the Maya who never tried in school and was broken, so goddamn broken. And she forces herself to stay like this, the person she used to be, and the sickness in her stomach is spreading and growing, and she wonders if she knows anything anymore. 

She doesn’t know if she ever liked him, and Riley keeps telling her she didn’t. She was just being Riley, she tells herself, even when Lucas says things that make her heart pound so loud she wonders if the people around her can hear. No, she just liked him when she was Riley. He tells her he chose someone, and she tells him that he chose Riley, her heart splitting in two when she sees his face. 

They go to a lodge, and she can feel it coming before it happens. He’s so jealous of this guy, and his fists are clenched, and she knows that its Riley, that she’s the one he chose. So she flirts with Josh, and she teases Lucas, and its almost like the past few months haven’t happened. Lucas goes to Riley, and she bites her lip and pretends its Josh she likes. She holds Josh’s hand, but she can’t bring herself to look him in the eyes, not when they are so blue and all she wants to see is green. 

She’s in it for the long game, she says. She tries to erase the situation with Lucas from her mind, and she smiles tightly while the groups all together, ignoring the held gazes between her best friends. She is so tired, so tired of pretending she is okay, and so tired of being alone. Zay is so kind to her, and she thinks she can get through this, that she’s going to get through this.

Months pass, and nothing changes. Her heart still shatters every time he says her name, and she tries to distance herself. She stops sitting with the group at lunch, and she starts to work on her art instead. Sometimes Zay sits with her, chattering benignly, and she appreciates him for how good he is to her. He and Farkle both watch her with concern, and she feels like they are waiting to see her fall apart.

Eventually Riley corners her, and she asks why things are so strange. Maya should tell her, she should, but she can’t, so she tells her she’s just feeling sick and she calls Shawn to pick her up. He holds her while she cries, and he tells her he’ll beat Lucas up if she wants. She laughs, and thinks she is lucky to have so many people that care. 

Farkle comes to the apartment one night, clambering through her window and sitting on the floor in front of her bed. She tries to stay stony faced, but when he asks if she still likes Lucas she can’t lie. He shakes his head and holds her tight, and tells her that lying never gets anyone anywhere. She knows he’s going to say something, so she braces herself.

She doesn’t go to school for a few days, and she ignores both Riley and Lucas’s texts. She paints, but everything comes out in shades of green and it makes her sick how ridiculous she is being over a boy, over a boy that is Riley’s. She feels disgusting, and she thinks that she deserves the heartache for being such a terrible friend. 

Lucas visits her on her third day at home, and Shawn begrudgingly lets him in at her mothers heeding. He stands in her bedroom doorway, and she hates him being here, she hates him knowing what she’s feeling. He tells her he’s sorry, and she nods her head curtly. He tells her he misses her, and it takes everything in her not to fall apart, because she misses him so much too. 

She still doesn’t hang out with the group as much, but she does see Riley and Lucas more. Riley never says anything about Lucas anymore, and she watches her with concern whenever they see each other. Lucas starts to visit the art room, and he sits with her while she paints. He sits in silence, just watching her paint, and it feels so different from their dynamic before, but she is just grateful to spend time with him again. 

Things become easier over time, and she doesn’t feel like she’s on the verge of breaking. The group is gearing up for sophomore year, and she lets herself be apart of them again. It still feels fractured, but she is glad to feel like she is not alone anymore. She can always feel Lucas’s stare when she is with them, and she tries her hardest to ignore it. 

When they finally get to sophomore year, things change. Smackle breaks up with Farkle, and Riley suddenly spends a lot of time with her school clubs and groups, faraway from the others. She knows something has happened, but she tries to stay uninvolved - because when has becoming involved in this group ever helped? She watches from afar. 

Riley and Lucas break up over Christmas break, and Maya expects Riley to be really upset. She isn’t, she is fine, and she goes to Farkle straight away and thats when Maya realises. And she is happy, so happy that they have realised how right for each other they are, and then she worries for Lucas. For Lucas, who has been broken up with for his best friend. 

She says as much to Riley, who smiles at her sadly. She tells her that he’s okay. She tells her Lucas is in love with someone else too. Lucas stays away for awhile, and Maya wonders if the group will ever go back to how it was when they were in middle school and everything was so much easier. 

She sees him at Topanga’s, and she doesn’t know what to say so she just wraps him in a tight hug, clinging to him. At first he’s surprised, but then he just wraps his arms around her, and she has missed him so much. They start seeing each other more and more after that, mostly because they need each other, and they’d finally realised just how much.

Everyone becomes okay again. The group knits itself back together, and Maya is the happiest she has been in a year. Farkle and Riley are so happy, and her heart warms watching them together like that. She gives up on the long game and meets a nice boy, and she thinks maybe she can finally get over the boy she met on the subway. 

Except she can’t. She tries and tries with so many different boys and girls, but she never can. And she can’t help falling more in love with him when he punches one of the boys on the football team for talking about her in the locker room. It hurts all the more to know she doesn’t deserve someone like him, that she was never good enough for such a huckleberry. 

They spend so much time together now, and he tells her that she is his best friend - before Farkle, before Zay, before Riley. He says he loves her, and she smiles and laughs and she tells him she loves him too. She wishes he could love her the way she wants him to, but she is happy all the same to have him her life. 

Then she’s at his house one night, her head on his lap and she looks up and asks him what she’s wanted to know for so long, who it was he loved so long ago. His face splits into a grin and he tells her in the softest voice that it was her, stupid. She sits up straight, facing him, and she opens her mouth to say something but nothing comes out. 

Her world is spinning and she is slack jawed, and finally he laughs. He laughs and he puts his hands on her face like he did when they were fourteen, but this time he kisses her. He pulls back and he whispers into her neck the things she’s always wanted to hear, and she is smiling. They lie in his bed that night with their hands clasped tight, and everything is going to be alright. She knows it for sure this time.


End file.
